1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, methods, apparatus, and products for provisioning bandwidth for a digital media stream.
2. Description of Related Art
The development of the EDVAC computer system of 1948 is often cited as the beginning of the computer era. Since that time, computer systems have evolved into extremely complicated devices. Today's computers are much more sophisticated than early systems such as the EDVAC. Computer systems typically include a combination of hardware and software components, application programs, operating systems, processors, buses, memory, input/output devices, and so on. As advances in semiconductor processing and computer architecture push the performance of the computer higher and higher, more sophisticated computer software has evolved to take advantage of the higher performance of the hardware, resulting in computer systems today that are much more powerful than just a few years ago.
One of the areas in which progress has been made is in provisioning bandwidth for a digital media stream. The delivery of real-time streamed content to users for viewing entails some special quality of service problems when the user chooses to switch between different content streams. When a user views real-time, live streamed content, it is expected that no significant delay be present in the stream, other than that injected by the broadcaster as a result of regulatory or similar considerations. Significant delays, particularly with regard to delivery of information which may have time based intrinsic value to the viewer, such as sports telecasts, stock market activity, and news, is highly undesirable. In a streamed media solution, content to be viewed is streamed within the allowable bandwidth to the viewer. Using the typical approach, when the viewer chooses to switch channels to a different piece of live content, a constantly pre-buffered stream but with a significant delay is made available to the user. There is also a further switching delay inherent between requests from the client and the content server. These delays make live broadcasts effectively no longer live. A typical television experience, with minimal switching delays, is not currently supportable.